Fundamental to business intelligence are the notions of regular behavior and exceptional behavior. When large numbers of business or economic processes are aggregated and viewed through collected data, a continuum typically results. Exceptional behavior often is the result of some discrete phenomenon that warrants investigation. Such a phenomenon could represent an exceptional risk or opportunity for the business.
A managed service is a service offering in which a vendor assumes operation of a portion of an enterprise's assets and provides technical services and/or supplies for such assets for a fee. As a form of outsourcing, it allows the enterprise to focus on its core business while enabling the assets of an enterprise to receive improved service at reduced cost.
One type of managed service involves managing an enterprise's printer assets and print services (i.e., a managed print service). In a managed print service, a vendor typically provides devices having one or more of a plurality of device models to an enterprise.
Business intelligence regarding managed print service accounts can identify exceptional behavior for particular device models and/or accounts. For example, exceptional behavior for color revenue generation in managed print services can be determined. For example, when negotiating a contract for a managed print service offering, account managers seek to meet the needs of the account while also providing printing devices with model types that generate good revenue streams. As such, it is important for account managers to identify whether particular printing device models generate acceptable revenue streams, particularly from color impressions. In addition, account managers would typically like to know whether particular accounts have sub-par or exceptional behavior with respect to generating revenue from color impressions. The model types of printing devices in sub-par accounts could be modified to increase color impression revenue. Conversely, the model types of printing devices in exceptional accounts could be mimicked in other accounts to attempt to generate profitable revenue streams from other accounts.
However, simply reviewing the proportion of revenue from color impressions across all printing devices having a particular model type is insufficient to distinguish exceptional or sub-par device models from typical device models. Considerable variation in distributions of color revenue is typical. Similarly, reviewing the proportion of revenue from color impressions across accounts is insufficient to distinguish exceptional or sub-par accounts from typical accounts.